Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Don’t fear the Repo - Directorate Boarding Tactics

SeerK here with a guest post from our local Melcon VP SMD_Vogrin. Learn well Corporate Ladder climbers. This VP is making a name for himself in Acquisitions.

Like most FSA factions, the Directorate
has access to a wide variety of tactics. We can match the enemy

gun-to-gun, engage in long-range duels, or smash face in a close
range brawl. However, we also have a variety of tools that let us
get tricky - why fight against the enemy’s strengths when you can
target his weaknesses? One of those tricks is the capture of
opposing vessels.

Many factions are pretty good at
boarding - it is an additional tool for them to further damage or
destroy their targets. For the Directorate, however, it can be not
just another tool, but a core tactic to build your fleet around.
With widespread access to Special Forces MAR, our cyberwarfare
weapons, and the Biohazard option for many of our weapons systems,
the Directorate demonstrates a unique strength in boarding. Where
others would damage, we crit; when others crit, we capture.

So, how do we start building our
collection of Other People’s Spaceships™? Well, in order to
capture a ship with boarding, you must get double their CP in net
hits on the boarding assault. So the first thing we want to do is
reduce their CP as low as possible. In fact, if we can get it down
to zero, we can capture with even a single net hit! We have 2
primary ways of killing crew.

The first is our Biohazard weapons.
Most of our beams, along with the Torpedos of our Deterrent-class
Battle cruisers (and allied Works Raptor Interdictor-class Cruisers)
can be upgraded with Biohazard, meaning that any time they damage the
enemy, even for a single HP damage, that ship also loses 1 crew. If
you’re looking to drop the crew to zero, this means you may want to
make many weaker attacks, instead of linking everything up for one
big crit.

Our second crew killer is also a very
useful tool for other situations - Cyberwarfare weapons are found on
our Overseer-class carrier, our Tormentor-class R&D cruisers, and
Hostility-class drones. While they do no actual hull damage, they
can rapidly deplete crew on a target vessel by targeting the Life
Support systems on their targeted strike rolls. The Hostility’s
Assault Robot Torpedos do even more crew damage on capitol-class
targets, as a compensation for having to make it past Point Defense
and Shields (but not the normal Cyberwarfare defense dice, as of the
May 2014 errata!). In addition, Cyberwarfare weapons can support our
assaults in other ways, as I’ll discuss next.

Once the crew is as low as possible, we
have to make sure we’ll actually win the assault - after all, it
doesn’t matter how few net hits we need to capture if the target
ends up rolling more hits than us! Our targets will be rolling dice
equal to their on-board AP, plus their Point Defense dice (including
linked PD from squadron-mates, if any). So we need to drop those 2
stats down as low as possible.

If you’ve killed most of the crew, PD
from the target ship itself should be fairly low, as it is reduced by
crew losses or hull damage. However, PD from other ships in the
squadron can quickly add up, especially if you’re boarding a big
ship that happened to bring along escorts. Your best bet is to
disorder the squadron somehow - if you’ve dropped them to zero
crew, they will have to test for it every turn! - or to eliminate the
squadron mates - no linking fire when they’re dead. Since you
can’t fire at a ship you’re boarding with the squadron launching
the boarding assault, it’s often worth it to use their shooting on
the rest of the target’s squadron to reduce that linked PD.

If you don’t want to reduce PD the
hard way, Cyberwarfare weapons again come to the forefront. Rolling
your targeted strikes on their Defensive Systems table will drop PD
to zero on a 3+ on the chart. Or if the PD is already at a low
number, we can roll those targeted strikes on the Bridge, where a 5+
will drop AP to zero! As far as I’m aware, this Security in
Disarray critical result is the ONLY way of reducing AP. Needless to
say, if you don’t have enough Cyberwarfare, doing normal targeted
strikes can also help cripple the target - our Precision Targeting
TAC card, and the Precision Strike upgrade for our Battle cruisers
and Destroyers, both provide excellent support for such “Percussive
Cyberwarfare”.

So now we’ve reduced the enemy crew
to zero, their PD is down to a single die from the target and it’s
disordered squadron mates can’t help, and AP is zero due to
Security in Disarray. We win, right? Well, we do have to finally
launch the assault and roll the dice. And most of the time we will
not have the ideal situation I described, so it’s best to bring
enough forces to do the job. At the same time, boarding assaults are
a VERY limited resource. Since most of our ships can only launch one
assault, you don’t want to use more forces than you have to - but
don’t get too stingy. It’s better to bring a margin of overkill
than to lose the assault because your opponent got a couple of lucky
6s.

My “go-to” ships for boarding are
our Justice-class Heavy Cruisers. 5 AP each, with Special forces
already included, a Cloak combined with 6 HP to get into assault
range. These bad boys have captured everything from Ghost stations
to intact Terran Carriers. Very few things like to see assaults from
15 dice hitting on 3+. Other good boarding vessels are our
Persecution-class Dreadnaughts and Judgement-class Battleships, both
of which can be accompanied by AP2 Punisher-class escorts. Of
course, while those big ships can take Special Forces, their escorts
can’t, and using them on the same assault means losing the bonus to
hit that the MAR would usually provide. Basic cruisers are also
useful, although they are much less likely to get across the field
intact, and you do have to pay extra for special forces. Our carrier
can also be fairly good at assault, since you may already be
including it for Cyberwarfare, and it can be loaded with assault
shuttles to provide multiple assaults over the course of the game
instead of just the one. However, given the short range of assault
boats, I find our carrier a bit slow to reliably deliver them into
the fray. For an assault shuttle platform, I turn to our allies at
Works Raptor.

Our natural allies, 50% of a
Directorate fleet can be Works Raptor squadrons. Their
Attrition-class assault carrier is fast, a difficult target, and can
be loaded with up to 10 Special Forces AP with access to Launch Tubes
and Second Assault. In short, it’s a boarding admiral’s dream
come true. They also can field Tyranny-class Corvettes, with a 15”
move, Elusive target, and 3 AP. Oh, and the corvettes can accompany
the carrier. It can all get a little pricy, but Works Raptor is a
major asset for a fleet capturing enemy ships.

So, what might a Directorate boarding
fleet look like? Here’s an example 800 point force, modified from
one of my standard “all-comers” lists. It’s a little top-heavy
(don’t try to field it in Escalating Engagement), but very focused
and with good synergy.

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